Fifteen years ago, Glenn Beck was a small-market DJ with a drinking problem, no friends, and bleak professional prospects. Today, he’s a Fox News superstar averaging 2.4 million viewers (in a mediocre time slot, no less), an inexorably successful author (his new book, Arguing with Idiots, is the fourth Beck opus to top the New York Times bestseller list), and the leader of a popular movement that condemns government in general and President Barack Obama in particular. What’s more, he’s gotten under the skin of politicians from both parties. Just last week, the White House took vigorous issue with Beck’s criticisms of senior Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina ripped Beck’s cynicism and teary tendencies in an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.

Notwithstanding Beck’s reckless asininity — e.g., his infamous claim that Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people” — that’s an impressive career arc. And the media, naturally, have been striving to grasp the Beck phenomenon: witness Time magazine’s credulous September 28 cover story, a sharp column by the New York Times’ Frank Rich, an earlier Times profile, and sundry other treatments ranging from the academic (Columbia Journalism Review) to the middlebrow (CBS’s Katie Couric).

Beck’s would-be interpreters occasionally note that he’s a Mormon: he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) as an adult, in 1999, with his wife and children. But in contrast with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, whose Mormonism was discussed in great detail during his failed 2008 presidential bid, the ramifications of Beck’s faith has gone largely unexplored. That’s unfortunate — because a case can be made that Beck is to Mormonism what Father Charles Coughlin was to Catholicism in the 1930s, when the “radio priest” peddled nasty, faith-based opposition to another ambitious Democratic president.

Given the ease with which this discussion could degenerate into Mormon-bashing, this reticence may be understandable. To fully get Beck, though, it’s necessary to understand just how many of his beliefs have specifically Mormon roots, or are conveyed in uniquely Mormon ways — from his embrace of former Mormon leader Ezra Taft Benson’s insatiable anti-communism to his Mormon-bred suspicion that the government is the agent of Satan. For some of Beck’s co-religionists, these links are obvious. Back in March, for example, writing at the Mormon-history blog the Juvenile Instructor, Christopher Jones — a doctoral student in history at William & Mary — noted that Beck seemed to be plumbing the disturbing depths of Mormon millenarianism, and marveled at the press’s seeming disinterest.

Once the link between Beck’s faith and politics gets made, intriguing questions emerge. Without his unsettling brand of Mormonism, would Glenn Beck still be Glenn Beck? Should members of the LDS Church be cheering or lamenting Beck’s protracted moment in the spotlight? Could Beck’s forays into stealth Mormon sermonizing make his conservative evangelical fans rethink their loyalty? And if Beck’s religiosity finally becomes a story, what might that mean for the lingering presidential hopes of 2012 Republican contender Mitt Romney?

Interview: James Carroll The Phoenix 's Adam Reilly recently spoke with Globe columnist James Carroll about his new book, Practicing Catholic (Houghton Mifflin), and his critical but durable relationship with the Roman Catholic Church.

Sin tax Among other things, your editorial calling for the Catholic Church to be punitively taxed for its anti-abortion lobbying suffers from a breathtaking lack of inconsistency.

Holy war And so it came to pass, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and evangelical Protestants have banded together to battle, well, the rest of us — the heathens, the godless liberals, the Hitchens-reading progressives.

Theology class My religion teaches me that I have a responsibility to work to create a better world for humanity and for all living beings in the world that God created.

The Church and abuse If the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church is to regain secular respect, and if it is to reassure its troubled communicants that it is worthy of their devotion, it must reconcile itself to the reality that child abuse is not just a horrendous sin requiring penance and spiritual absolution, but also a vile crime that demands civil prosecution.

Catholic Tilt If, sometime in the next few decades, humanity kicks the religion habit once and for all, the current crop of atheist agitators will deserve plenty of credit.

Same-sex marriage From the podium at EqualityMaine's 25th anniversary dinner last Saturday night, former state senator Ethan Strimling posed a question to the 630 people in attendance: If gay marriage were allowed in Maine, how many of you would tie the knot?

The blessing of abortion Abortion is dominating the headlines — and giving new resonance to the radically pro-choice gospel of Katherine Ragsdale, dean of Cambridge's Episcopal Divinity School.

Keeping faith His publicist calls Piers Paul Read "the anti-Dan Brown." She's capitalizing on a buzz - worthy name, sure, but it's a fairly insightful description of a man whose latest book, The Death of a Pope , explores not the Brownish theme of the Catholic Church secretly at work in world affairs, but rather its inverse.

BULLY FOR BU! | March 12, 2010 After six years at the Phoenix , I recently got my first pre-emptive libel threat. It came, most unexpectedly, from an investigative reporter. And beyond the fact that this struck me as a blatant attempt at intimidation, it demonstrated how tricky journalism's new, collaboration-driven future could be.

STOP THE QUINN-SANITY! | March 03, 2010 The year is still young, but when the time comes to look back at 2010's media lowlights, the embarrassing demise of Sally Quinn's Washington Post column, "The Party," will almost certainly rank near the top of the list.

RIGHT CLICK | February 19, 2010 Back in February 2007, a few months after a political neophyte named Deval Patrick cruised to victory in the Massachusetts governor's race with help from a political blog named Blue Mass Group (BMG) — which whipped up pro-Patrick sentiment while aggressively rebutting the governor-to-be's critics — I sized up a recent conservative entry in the local blogosphere.

RANSOM NOTES | February 12, 2010 While reporting from Afghanistan two years ago, David Rohde became, for the second time in his career, an unwilling participant rather than an observer. On October 29, 1995, Rohde had been arrested by Bosnian Serbs. And then in November 2008, Rohde and two Afghan colleagues were en route to an interview with a Taliban commander when they were kidnapped.

POOR RECEPTION | February 08, 2010 The right loves to rant against the "liberal-media elite," but there's one key media sector where the conservative id reigns supreme: talk radio.